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October 6, 2011

Your Opinion: October 5, 2011

I find it rather arrogant

In a recent front-page article concerning the lawsuit by the Cooperstown Holstein Corporation against the Town of Middlefield over the legality of our zoning laws that restrict heavy industry, complainant Jennifer Huntington is quoted as saying, “Anything you do in life has risks.” She then goes on to state, “I don’t believe individual towns should be controlling our nation’s energy sources.” Isn’t that special.

Frankly, I don’t recall anyone in your organization asking me about these risks.

I find it rather arrogant that you feel you have the right to put my property, my business, and my water supply at risk, so that you can make money. Thank you very much for your willingness to assume these risks for me.

Furthermore, if the local population is going to be removed from the process of having control over what happens in our town, then why don’t we go ahead and drop this silly democracy thing altogether, and hand over control of the county to the big oil corporations.

After all, they always know what is good for us.

In short, Ms. Huntington, when it comes to taking risks, you have every right to jump out of an airplane without a parachute, but you do not have the right to land on my house in the process.

Jim Gates

Cooperstown

Kosmer is ill-informed

In reading the article titled, “Village may get bed tax funds,” I was struck by the arrogance and ignorance of representative Johnson’s opponent

First, let me say “thank you” to Johnson for being such a strong, vocal supporter of the village of Cooperstown and understanding that the tourism, that supports our economy is not only a summertime inconvenience to village residents, but it is also a financial strain. When Johnson campaigned for his first term, he made bed tax funding for the village a key campaign issue. And, upon assuming office, he was successful in getting the first-ever such payment of $100,000. In the subsequent two years he got the village an additional $150,000 combined. The following year (budget year 2011), he got another $100,000 in the budget. Kosmer alleges that the Republican-controlled majority removed the money from the final budget. Kosmer is woefully ill-informed because, while a couple of Republican board members voted to remove the funding, it was the unanimous vote of the Democrats on the board that actually removed it from the final budget.

For the four years that representative Johnson has represented the village, he has worked to have bed tax money included in every budget — election year or not — so, Kosmer’s misguided allegation that this is an election-year gimmick is quite simply a lie.

Cooperstown deserves better representation than someone who will use blatantly false allegations and misinformation to further their own political agenda. Representative Johnson has provided common-sense quality leadership and deserves our continued support as our county representative.

Diane Koffer

Cooperstown

Much waste in leaf pickup

I think Cooperstown needs some change in leaf collecting procedure. A very expensive leaf-sucking device is operated by an employee manning a vacuum hose while another employee rakes leaves ahead of it. The leaves are blown into a plywood box (built on a rainy day by the street crew) on a village truck.

When the box is full, the expensive vacuum machine is unhooked and downtime begins while the truck leaves to dump its load and return. It is obvious if we used a second village truck with a plywood box built on a rainy day, downtime would be reduced. Traditionally the collection of leaves is a race against weather until the snow flies and then uncollected leaves clog the storm drains causing a lot of trouble and expense in the spring.

After a lot of questioning, I understand we will be using only one truck this year. The reason is that Republican Mayor Joe Booan is too dumb to realize the efficiencies gained by operating two trucks. The dumbness fits in with his outlandish thinking — that there is something wrong with the downtown village sidewalks. Do you think we really needed a $170,000 street sweeper he bought?

I suggest Republican Mayor Booan and his street superintendent furnish the one extra person needed to operate two trucks.

Bob Joyce

Cooperstown

Kosmer sees new future

I support John Kosmer for Otsego County representative.

I have known John for over 25 years. He is a bright, articulate, thinking person who has thought often and long about many of the issues that we face today.

He is very concerned about our economy, our health, our clean water supply, and our quality of life. John is an environmentalist, and has led the way with his passive solar house.

He is an author of many articles related to the conservation of energy and always looking for new and better ways to move toward a more sustainable and secure future.

He is against fracking and he is for renewable energy. He is against turning New York State into one of the world’s largest junkyards with gas drilling. He supports all efforts to attract new people, businesses and jobs to New York State.

He believes that New York state has a bright, new future ahead of it as we begin to recognize that our long term future is with our beautiful state, our quality of life, our abundance of fresh, clean water and not with a boom and bust cycle of drilling for natural gas that will leave us desperate and poor.

John can see our new, healthy, sane, sustainable future and he wants to help us get there.

James R. Dean

Cooperstown

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